


Enjoy the Silence

by edema_ruh



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Crying, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, FitzSimmons - Freeform, Fluff, Graphic Description, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, LMD, Night Terrors, Nightmares, Sharing a Bed, Stabbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-10-30 20:16:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10884168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edema_ruh/pseuds/edema_ruh
Summary: “I thought…”, he hesitates, sniffing, and oh God, she hopes he isn’t crying, because if there is one thing she isn’t capable of handling without her heart breaking is Fitz crying. “I thought you wouldn’t care”.This hits her like an ocean of ice cold water, making her blink dumbly as she stares down at him, trying to make sense of the words she had just heard. Why on Earth would she not care about Fitz? Wasn’t crawling her way out of her own grave just to find him proof enough that, if anything, Leopold Fitz was the one person she cared about the most in the whole world?Jemma has nightmares about killing Fitz and Fitz has nightmares about killing Jemma. They try to cope.





	Enjoy the Silence

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this before the season finale.

                In her dreams, he is right beneath her. There has been no deceit and her leg is perfectly fine, but she still can’t overcome the desperate need to get away, to do whatever it takes to flee, the primordial urge to fight or flight that makes vermillion take over her vision and adrenaline pump through her veins. He’s trapped, but she can’t recall whether that had been her own doing or not. She reaches for the knife, and stabs him in the chest.

                He screams. She isn’t sure she will ever be able to forget the way he screams. It sounds too real, too much like the Fitz she knows and loves for her to be able to forget it. The piercing sounds embed themselves at the back of her mind, ready to surface back to torment her anytime. But there is still fear and desperation and the need to get away, so she continues to make the knife tear his flesh and his chest bones, blood spurting out in a movie-like way and covering her hands and torso in the hot redness that resembles the vermillion in her eyes.

                It’s only when she finally shoves the knife into Fitz’s neck that she comes to the realization that he is not a decoy, nor has he ever been.

                She always wakes up screaming when she has nightmares like this. The fresh memories of Fitz’s desperate, pained pleas for her to stop, the terrifying memories of the way the man she loved screamed as she murdered him, the phantom sensation of his blood in her hands and skin and clothes and knife: these were all too much. The first time the nightmare tormented her, she was afraid to sleep again. She was perfectly aware of how idiotic that was – not sleeping would do more harm than good – but the thought of closing her eyes and seeing him dead, after everything they went through, was too much for her to bear. She hated the guilty looks Fitz had sent towards her on the first time she woke up screaming and crying, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to comfort him. By God, she couldn’t even bring herself to look him in the eye now, not because of the terrors of what he had done in the Framework, but because every time she allowed herself to get lost inside that deep blue gaze of his, she’d recall the way his eyes had looked as she stabbed him in the chest over and over and over until he was dead beneath her.

                _This is only a nightmare, Jemma_ , she’d usually tell herself, taking a series of deep breaths in an attempt to calm down. _The Fitz you stabbed wasn’t real. It was just an LMD. You are being irrational. The real Fitz is right beside you, probably very worried, and you should definitely reassure him that everything is ok._

                She doesn’t.

                She can never look at him when she has the nightmares. It’s the little gestures of silent comfort Fitz gives her that keep her from falling apart completely. She desperately wants to reach for him, to allow herself to be embraced and to bury her face against Fitz’s chest. She wants his fingers running through her hair, she wants the feel of his lips pressing against her forehead as he delivers a soft kiss that makes her feel loved and safe. She wants to get lost in Fitz’s scent and she wants to reassure him that everything will be all right, that she forgives him for everything, for taking part in Aida’s creation, for hiding her, for being reckless, for being that horrible man he became in the Framework. She wants to look him in the eye and tell him that she loves him, that they will be ok, that she will never give up on him no matter what the universe has in store for them.

                She lies with her back turned to him, instead. A gentle, yet hesitant hand finds its way to her shoulder and rubs it, an unanswered question lingering in the air. And Jemma doesn’t turn to him. She’s not ready yet. She’s not ready to face him this intimately, this closely, just as closely as she had been to him as she stabbed him to death. So she doesn’t. She allows the hand to caress her shoulder and her back until it disappears, leaving a phantom feeling that makes her shiver from the absence of Fitz’s warmth. She can tell that he’s trying to put distance between them on the bed, almost as if he is afraid to touch her, but she can’t bring herself to try and fix it just yet. She can’t look at him without seeing the vermillion, and that’s enough for her to stay there, lying on her side, back turned to Fitz on their shared bed, eyes pooling with unshed tears and breath hitching in her throat as she tries to pretend that she isn’t shaking.

                The Fitz she kills in her nightmares is the real Fitz, not the LMD. These horrid dreams only grow more recurrent until she almost grows used to them. Of course, she can never really grow used to the sight of Fitz dying by her hands, but with time she doesn’t scream anymore. Dark, silent nights have her waking up with a jolt, breath heavy in her chest and tears streaming down her cheeks, but no scream ripping itself from her throat. She thanks the universe for small miracles.

                Fitz never asks her what she dreams about, and so she never tells. She assumes he must understand they have already been through perils enough throughout their lives in S.H.I.E.L.D, and mostly for the past months, to have nightmare material for a whole lifetime. She doesn’t miss the miserable looks he directs towards her every now and then, though, and even if that makes her feel incredibly guilty, she says nothing. Fitz already has enough on his mind to feel bad about. He doesn’t need to know what his LMD copy had done to her, to add on the top of that list.

                In the mornings, they don’t talk about it. They go on about their lives as if everything was the same, even though it is clearly not. They are smart enough to understand that only time is able to heal some wounds, and things won’t go back to what they used to be without proper time to recover from the traumatic events they had been through. But she still hugs him. He still kisses her. They go to work, they do their job, and they go back home, hand in hand, almost as if everything could be ok. Sometimes, Fitz looks at her with such adoration in his eyes that Jemma feels overwhelmed by emotion. She always makes sure to tell him that she loves him, no matter how repetitive and stupid that makes her feel. She has never been one to be overly blatant about her own emotions, but she knows Fitz needs it. So she gives that to him.

                It takes her a long time to notice that he avoids meeting her eyes, too.

                After a month, she can finally hold Fitz’s gaze for more than just a few seconds when they are sitting in silence. Of course, she could still talk to him, and look at him during work or while having conversations. But it was the silence that made everything more difficult. While they talked, or when there were people around, Jemma could bear looking at Fitz without feeling afraid of what she had done, without remembering the blood and the pleads and the screams. But the silence only served to remind her of his dead body, eyes empty and glassy and staring at her. The absence of sound when it was just the two of them made room for his screams to reappear inside her head, because they had been alone when it happened, hadn’t they? They had been completely alone, and Jemma had been so desperate exactly because of that. There was no one she could trust, at that time, not even Fitz. And so she stabbed him.

                Seeing the thick, warm blood in her hands every time she closed her eyes to catch some sleep was tiring, but she was coping. She truly was. She only needed a little more time.

                She knew it hadn't been her Fitz. That was all that mattered, right? Those screams weren’t his. Those pleas weren’t his. Those dead, unseeing eyes weren’t his. The blood, the voice, the tears hadn’t been his. There was no reason for her to be so upset about it, because her Fitz, the real Fitz was lying right beside her in bed, his skin mere inches away from hers, and yet she couldn’t bear to turn and look at him in the night because of what she had done. Because the LMD hadn’t been Fitz, but it could have been, and she could have killed the love of her life over a misconception.

                But that hadn’t been her Fitz _. Her_ Fitz would have never hurt her, never stab her or hit her in the head. He would have never attempted to force her into a virtual reality, he would have never emotionally manipulated her. That hadn’t been her Fitz. That had been a twisted copy of himself, without the goodness, the kindness and the love that were part of the essence of Fitz’s very being and what made him the man Jemma had fallen in love with.

                It takes her a while to get there, to finally come to terms with what she had done. But when she finally does, she can’t help but to scoff at the tragic irony that the universe had once again set upon them. Maybe Fitz had been right when he said that the cosmos wanted them to be apart.

                When she finally finds the courage to look him in the eye without being afraid, he leaves.

                She hasn’t felt this type of desperation ever since she found there was a possibility that Fitz was the decoy, and not Daisy. She hadn’t felt this type of anguish ever since she found out about the man Fitz had become in the Framework. She hadn’t felt this type of helplessness ever since she had seen the man she loved kill an innocent woman in cold blood just to prove a point.

                She hadn’t felt this lonely ever since she had been stuck in a deserted alien planet lightyears away from home.

                She looks for him. She calls his mobile, she floods his phone with texts and his inbox with emails. She considers calling his mom, but decides otherwise. She anxiously sits at the edge of their bed, almost giving in and recurring to her old, unhealthy habit of biting her nails that she had dropped in the first year of the Academy. She taps her feet, bounces her leg, ties her hair up in different styles until she grows tired and recurs to her usual ponytail. Fitz is five hours late. He should have gotten home five hours ago.

                She considers texting Daisy and actually does, after another hour passes and Fitz doesn’t arrive. She knew she shouldn’t have stayed late at work, but after everything that had happened, after all the bad advertising S.H.I.E.L.D had gotten, she had so much work to do. She shouldn’t have let Fitz bid her goodbye and leave by himself, she should have asked him to stay a little while as she finished what she was supposed to turn in for the day and then they were supposed to go home together, as they always did. She was supposed to look him in the eye and make him want to stay, but she hadn’t done any of that. So she texts Daisy a simple and discrete “has Fitz been in contact with you?” and pretends her heart doesn’t race as soon as her phone pings with a reply.

                “No, why? Everything ok?”, Daisy asks, and Jemma can actually hear the words in her voice. With a frustrated sigh, she considers not replying, but if Fitz had gotten himself in any sort of trouble, she doesn't really want to make a fuss about it. Thoughts of Aida and alternate realities and a dead Fitz once again find their way into her mind, and she can’t help but to feel desperation claw up her throat and settle there in the form of a knot.

                “He hasn’t gotten home yet. It’s been six hours”, she texts back. Actually saying the words makes tears pool in her eyes, and she feels a twinge of embarrassment for crying so much lately. Instead of replying through text, Daisy calls her, and her thumb hovers above the touch screen with a nearly unnoticeable tremble, as she tries to decide whether she should take the call or not.

                But then, right before the makes the decision to swipe the screen, the doorknob of their apartment twists and the door opens ever-so-slightly, as if Fitz was trying not to make much noise, probably assuming Jemma was asleep. She immediately gets to her feet, not sure if she should break into a run and hug him or yell at him for giving her such a fright. She decides that the appropriate answer for her dilemma is both. She quickly turns down Daisy’s call and texts her a simple “he just got here” only so that she isn’t too worried, before walking to their living room in a quick pace and finding Fitz there, about to sit down at the couch she spent such a long time choosing back in the days that furniture was still something important in their lives.

                For what feels like the smallest fraction of seconds, he just stands there, staring at her with a mix of emotions in his eyes that range from fright to confusion. Before he can articulate her name, as she can see he is about to do, she breaks the distance between them by running and pulling him into what was probably the tightest hug she had ever given someone. A month of not allowing herself to be embraced due to guilt and fear weights on that hug, and she can feel his hesitation as he hugs her back, as if he is unsure whether she wants to be touched or not. Before she can get too emotional to the point of tears ruining her speech, he shoves him away, a bit too forcefully as some sort of punishment for the fright he had given her.

                “Where _were_ you?”, Jemma all but yells, hating how her voice breaks between words. She realizes she must look like a mess, hair disheveled from the many times she tried to tie it, eyes red and filled with tears of anger and relief at the same time, hands shaking even though she did her best to try and settle them down. Fitz stares back at her, clearly confused about being hugged and then shoved away, and he continues to hesitate for a few more moments before stuttering out an explanation.

                “I… I, I was at… Mack’s”, he says, the tiniest hint of a frown appearing in his brow and disappearing as quickly as it had showed up, almost as if he didn’t understand why Jemma was reacting that way. He subtly places a hand behind his hip, taking the other one to his mouth as he started to bite down at a nail. Jemma huffs out an incredulous breath, staring at him in sheer disbelief. He stares back with something that could have been an apology in his eyes.

                “Doesn’t Mack’s house have phone service?”, she asks, raising a single eyebrow, and allowing it to drop instantly. Something ugly was blossoming inside her chest and she realized it was a mixture of frustration and anger. “I’ve been trying to call you for the past six hours, Fitz! Why didn’t you pick up?”. Her voice goes up an octave at the last words and she takes an angry step towards him, despite of her best attempts to keep her cool. Fitz’s flinch is barely noticeable, but Jemma sees it and it makes her heart drop anyway. She had forgotten, she had forgotten how recent everything still was, and how aggressively and loudly Aida had treated Fitz. “Sorry”, she immediately says, tone softer, because the last thing that Jemma Simmons wants in the whole world is for Fitz to think she is anything like that monster who had abused him for so long. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rash to you. I was worried, that’s all”.

                There’s a pregnant silence in which she just looks at him, hating the way he seems to think her feet are more attention-worthy than her face. They had been having trouble looking – truly looking – at each other in the eye ever since they had gotten out of the Framework, and it would be hypocritical of Jemma to demand that he met her gaze when _she_ had been the one avoiding looking at him for the entirety of the past month. But still, something selfish and ugly inside of her heart yearned to see Fitz’s eyes, just so that she would be nearer to understanding what was going on inside his head. The distance between them in the living room was of mere steps, but somehow it felt bigger than that.

                “Why didn’t you pick up?”, she asks, voice tender and yet clearly hurt, once she realized that he wouldn’t say anything else. This only served for Fitz’s head to drop lower, as if he wanted the ground to swallow him whole.

                “I’m sorry, Jemma”, he finally sighs, voice firm but so unbearably sad that all she wants to do in that moment is to hug him tightly again and squeeze the pain out of his body. But she knows she can’t, so she waits. “I should, I… I should have picked up. I didn’t mean to worry you”.

                “You did”, she says, despite of herself. She doesn’t want to start throwing accusations at Fitz, specially not with the state he’s been in after everything, but she is hurt and worried and sad. She misses him. Her voice sounds as hurt as she feels.

                “I’m really sorry”, he sighs, sounding tired. He unceremoniously drops onto the couch, a hand covering his eyes from her view. Her heart twists. He looks so unhappy. Actually, now that she thinks about it, the unhappiness never quite left his eyes. “I just couldn’t do it”.

                “Why not?”, she asks, feeling genuinely confused. She wants to sit down beside him and hug him, but it feels somewhat inappropriate. She waits.

                “I thought…”, he hesitates, sniffing, and oh God, she hopes he isn’t crying, because if there is one thing she isn’t capable of handling without her heart breaking is Fitz crying. “I thought you wouldn’t care”.

                This hits her like an ocean of ice cold water, making her blink dumbly as she stares down at him, trying to make sense of the words she had just heard. Why on _Earth_ would she not care about Fitz? Wasn’t crawling her way out of her own grave just to find him proof enough that, if anything, Leopold Fitz was the one person she cared about the most in the whole world?

                “Fitz”, she starts, not even sure of what she is about to say, but a subtle shake from his head makes her stop in her tracks, lips slightly parted in confusion and surprise.

                “No, no, I…”, he swallows dry, finally uncovering his eyes, and lifting his head to look at her, truly took at her. His eyes are damp and his brow is twisted in something that can only be described as helplessness. She must have allowed the hurt to seep in her tone as she called his name, because Fitz looks incredibly sorry. “No, I didn’t mean that. I know you would care, I just… I thought. I thought you’d be relieved”, he sighs, and he looks like he wants to break eye contact, but something in Jemma’s face must have made him decide against it. “That I wasn’t here”.

                Jemma can actually feel all her blood make its way to her stomach and she just stands there, heart beating painfully in her chest. Fitz thought she would be relieved by his absence? After all they went through, he really thought that she didn’t want his company? That his presence by her side wasn't what her very soul yearned for the most?

                “Why would I be relieved?”, she asks, voice small, taking a tentative step towards him. There’s a hint of a frown in her tone. His head drops and so does her heart, because she wants to keep looking at him. He scoffs self-deprecatingly.

                “Are we going to keep pretending we both don’t wake up every night because of our nightmares?”, he asks sadly, head shaking.

                “You have nightmares too”, Jemma states dumbly after a few seconds of epiphany, and _it really_ is dumb because she should have thought about that. She should have known that Fitz had nightmares as well, not only because of everything he went through in the Framework and afterwards, but also because he had always been awake every single time she roused from sleep with not much further than a soundless gasp. Fitz looks up at her with confusion in his face, and then his face drops.

                “You didn’t know”, he says simply, and Jemma feels like the worst person in the world for not consciously realizing that before. She is aware that, in a subconscious level, she must have known that Fitz had nightmares that were probably just as bad as her own, but in the tight grasp of her own fear and her own terrors, she hadn’t brought herself to put much thought into that matter.

                She should have.

                “That doesn’t explain why you think I would ever be relieved by your absence”, she states, just because she doesn’t want to confirm what Fitz had said. He smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He turns his gaze away from her.

                “I understand that it… it must be hard t-to look. To look at me, after everything you’ve seen”, he swallows dry, and his voice sounds constricted, as if he is forcing it out while trying to sound as stern as possible. He is failing. “And I really don’t know how you can still stomach the sight of me”, he sniffs again, face scrunching up in pure misery, and that’s it. Jemma finally closes the remaining distance between them and drops on the couch beside Fitz, thigh glued to thigh as she allows her hand to gently caress his shoulder as it’s their usual. He tenses up, but continues. “But I… I didn’t want to k-keep making you uncomfortable”, he says, and Jemma interrupts.

                “You don’t”.

                “You couldn’t even look at me, Jemma”, he retorts miserably, voice tight. His breath hitches in his throat. “And I understand. I really do. I can’t look at myself, either”, he continues, and he must have heard the sound of her heart breaking because it’s very impossible that he didn’t.

                “Fitz”, she says, as calmly as she can, “that’s not it”.

                “So I went over to Mack’s, b-because we haven’t talked much ever since _… it_ happened, but he wasn’t there, so I just sat by his door because… because…”, he trails off, covering his eyes again, and she can hear the little broken sounds he’s making as he cries.

                “Fitz”, she says, because it’s all that she can say. Somehow, this makes him cry harder.

                “I know y-you all blame me, and you’re right to”, he sniffs. “I know I ruined everything we had. I just didn’t want to keep m-making you unhappy. I was going to ask Mack if I could live with him for a w-while, because I wanted to give you space and he’s the only… the only one who seems to b-be as… as broken…”, he trails off again. Jemma can’t keep the sob she had been holding inside her.

                “Don’t say that”, she cries, voice ugly and face scrunching in a very similar way to Fitz’s. “Don’t say that. I don’t blame you, none of us do. Those things that happened were programmed –“

                “But I did them”, he interrupts, sounding like he had been having the very same discussion with himself and already knew every argument that could be made by heart. “ _Me_. Not a computer program, me”.

                “Because you were conditioned to”, Jemma explains, trying to wipe Fitz’s tears away gently with her thumb, without trying to force him to look at her. He allows her own tears to stream freely down her face. “And that wasn’t real. That wasn’t your life, Fitz, _this_ is. Being a good man, the man that I love, this is who you are. Who you were there doesn’t exist. It isn’t real. And no one blames you, as much as we don’t blame May”.

                “Why?”, Fitz asks, helpless, turning his head to look at Jemma with a profound sadness in his eyes. “Why not? You saw me kill t-that woman, I s-s-shot you in the l-leg, I was about to k-kill you, Jemma, how can you… not…”, he sobs, and Jemma finally envelops him into a heartfelt hug. He clings to the front of her shirt, fingers clutching tightly at the fabric as if the thought of letting her go is the most painful thing he can fathom. He is shaking and crying, and Jemma just holds him, placing kisses all over the top of his head and running one of her hands up and down his back in an attempt to comfort him. “I wouldn’t have b-been able to live with myself”, he whispers, voice muffled by her bosom, and she closes her eyes in grief.

                “If it’s any consolation”, she says sadly, voice sounding as tight as her chest felt. “I did kill you”.

                Fitz pulls away from their messy embrace to look at her with a frown, as if he didn’t understand what she was saying. She sighs. It was about time they finally came clean with each other.

                “While you were in the Framework”, she explains, fingers never ceasing to caress Fitz. It felt as if the no-touch-in-the-silence rule they had silently stablished had finally tumbled down. “An LMD version of you attacked me”. She hates how guilty this makes Fitz look. “It tried to put me into the Framework as well. And I killed it”.

                They stare at each other for a long time, Fitz’s eyes wide in something akin to horror.

                “That’s what I dream about”, Jemma continues, voice breaking slightly. She feels Fitz go stiff beneath her touch. “Except in my dreams, it isn’t an LMD I kill. It’s you”.

                “Jemma”, he says softly as she starts to weep, lowering her head. This time, he is the one who embraces her, pulling her towards his chest in the very same way she hadn’t allowed herself to be held for such a long time, and oh, how she had missed this. They are half-lying, half-sitting on the couch now, Jemma’s head resting against Fitz’s chest as they limbs tangle, trying to keep as much contact as they can after a month of unspoken distance.

                “I was afraid”, she explains, voice low. “I was afraid that I would end up hurting you. The real you. Like I did to that thing”, a shaky sigh. “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself, either”.

                There’s a long, comfortable silence in which they just hold each other and breathe together.

                “In my dream, it isn’t your leg I shoot”, Fitz says simply after what feels like ages, and Jemma just nods.

                “I’m so sorry I made you feel like I didn’t want you around”, Jemma sniffs, sincerity seeping through her voice. She snuggles closer to him as if to make a point, and he holds her more tightly.

                “I’m sorry I hurt you”, he replies, and the words speak volumes. She knows he isn’t only talking about the shot in the leg.

                “I love you”, Jemma says, because it feels like it needs to be said. “Please, don’t leave”, she adds, because she doesn’t know what she would do if he did. He needed her just as much as she needed him, and she still had a whole month of pushing each other away to make up to.

                “I love you too, Jemma”, he says without hesitation, words coming to his lips as naturally as breathing.

                “Promise you won’t go anywhere I can’t follow”, she reinforces, just because she notices he didn’t reply to her request. The _‘not again’_ lingers in the air, unsaid.

                “I promise”, Fitz says after hesitating for some moments. “I promise”.

                They fall asleep like that, with the promise that, eventually, despite of whatever else the cosmos had in store, they would heal.

                They always did.

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a silly oneshot I attempted because Fitzsimmons is one of my favorite pairings. Hope it turned out ok!  
> Kudos are deeply appreciated and comments make me feel good about myself! Constructive criticism is more than welcome.  
> Thank you for reading this!  
> You can find me on tumblr as edema--ruh and on twitter as @prouvvaire.


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